A Quiet Sea

In 1998, a 17-ton, 26’ by 12’ portion of TITANIC’s hull was salvaged from the wreck.  Since, it has been on exhibit at the MGM Luxor Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas; a haunting and powerful remnant of the ship and its mythic status.

The intent of A Quiet Sea is to bring the hull section to NYC, having it arrive at pier 59, at the foot of West 18th Street, the former White Star pier on the Hudson River waterfront, where TITANIC was to dock in 1912.  After saluting the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, the piece will arrive in Manhattan on April 17, 2027. When it arrives at pier 59, TITANIC and those lost will have symbolically, and poignantly, completed the maiden voyage in the course of their passage through the ages.

 

This signal event will mark the opening of a larger series of displays and gatherings, which will look at a broad range of social, cultural, and technical issues that figure in the great ship’s misadventure - then and to the present.  The project will invite participants to give expression to the historic tragedy through multiple programs and several venues. 

 

Through exhibits, enhanced by poetry, dance and music, we want to examine how accepted beliefs of the day figured in the great vessel’s demise.  We will also examine the chain of circumstances that culminated in the loss of TITANIC, and how they show the contradictions between industrial prowess and technical limitations, and how ingenuity can be easily undone by complacency.  The project will examine the environmental conditions, and the degree of situational awareness that led the most highly rated Ship Master of his day to make a series of disastrous judgements on a serene night.  The program will interpret the actions and inactions both as examples of human failings and as fundamental truths of human nature.

This, then, was RMS TITANIC: in fact, an ambitious endeavor with a clear commercial purpose; in legend, a unique marine disaster compounded of a cascade of small decisions. If any of these had turned out differently, the ship and the lives lost might have been spared resulting in, as one may imagine, the highly anticipated, joyful and orderly debarkation at Pier 59 over a Century ago.